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Landscape on Mars taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover after crossing a dune. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
If you could bring some of Mars to Earth, what would you choose? This question is coming true as ESA opens a call for scientists to join POT team working to determine which Martian samples should be collected and stored by the Perseverance rover to launch this summer
Perseverance is an independent mission looking for signs of habitable conditions on our neighboring planet, but it’s also part of the international Mars Sample Return Campaign that ESA member states agreed to fund last year during Space19 +.
In a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, USA. The engineers observed the first driving test for NASA’s Mars 2020 vehicle on December 17, 2019. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Traveling more than 53 million kilometers to Mars, landing, collecting samples and launching a vehicle to return to Earth is unprecedented. This campaign will span a decade and will involve four launches, including three from Earth and the first launch from another planet.
Interplanetary geo-caching
When Perseverance lands on Mars, it will explore the area for over a year. One of your main tasks will be to collect samples in cigar-sized metal cylinders that you will leave on the surface for collection at a later date. As part of this international collaboration, ESA plans to provide a sophisticated Sample Fetch Rover to be operated during NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander mission in the middle of this decade.
The ESA rover will collect the samples that the Perseverance rover collected and take them to the lander, where they will be carefully stored in a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The MAV will launch the sample container from the Martian surface, placing it in orbit around Mars.
Another important contribution from ESA will be the largest and most robust spacecraft flying to Mars: the Earth Return Orbiter that will meet the sample and bring it to Earth.
Packaging for a return to Earth
Although the entire campaign is in the initial phase of the project, scientific experts must now be selected so that they can begin training and operate together with the Perseverance scientific team to improve the value of the samples to be collected. The selected scientists will also have to anticipate the needs of future researchers who can analyze these samples for a very diverse range of studies on Earth.
“We encourage requests from experts outside the space field,” says Dr. Gerhard Kminek, interim scientist at ESA’s Mars Sample Return Program. “We need field geologists and laboratory experts who know how to choose the right samples based on information from the instruments Perseverance has on board.”
The ESA human space flight team leader adds: “The experts selected through this call will receive training to become part of the international team of remote Martian geologists. These are exciting times and we look forward to receiving the best proposals that Europe has to offer. ”
Discovering the secrets of our Solar System
Studying samples of Mars on Earth will allow scientists to use instruments more powerful than anything that can fly in robotic missions. The opportunity to learn and share resources, including sending samples to the best laboratories in the world, offers incredible opportunities for new discoveries.
Artist’s impression of ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter spacecraft that is part of the Mars Sample Return mission series to bring samples from Mars. The image shows the Earth Return Orbiter elements. Including a basketball-sized container with samples from Mars, the Orbit Insertion Module, a chemical powered stage to insert the spacecraft into Mars orbit that is ejected to save mass upon returning to Earth, and the capsule of entry to Earth that will spill onto Earth. Credit: ESA
The samples can be analyzed over and over again, allowing new information to be extracted, just as with lunar samples brought to Earth in the 1960s and 1970s, which continue to reveal new discoveries to this day.
Martian soil collected by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover in a sandy area called Rocknest. The mission’s scientific team evaluates that the bright particles near the center of the image, and similar ones in other parts of the well, are native Martian material. Credit: NASA
Gerhard concludes: “There are many reasons to study Mars, but one of the most pressing is that while life arose and evolved on Earth, we still don’t know if life had a chance on Mars. Planetary scientists can study rocks, sediments and soils looking for clues to uncover the potential geological and biological history of Mars, then by comparing those findings to Earth, we also learn more about our own planet.
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